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Real Launches Music Download Service
fupeg writes "Spurred on by Apple's success, as well as their own purchase of listen.com, Real Networks announced their own online music service, dubbed RealOne Rhapsody. Here is the press release. They're offering songs at $0.79 per song, but with a $9.99/month subscription. The first two months are free. The press release says that 2/3 of their 300,000 song catalog is available for CD burning, while everything is available for 'on-demand' listening."
And yes, it requires a Windows PC and is only available in the United States. It looks they are having a 14 day trial, with the first three months at $4.98, months 4++ being $9.95 each. The free trial covers unlimited "on demand" music and Internet radio. CD burning costs are not covered by the free trial ($0.79 per song on each CD). It also sports a horrid image containing both Avril Lavigne and Fiddy Cent in close proximity to that David Bowie guy, who plain refuses to die and go away.
PS: fist post fools
Thank GOD for newsgroups.
I can't imagine most people paying for something that allows only on-demand listening. There are far too many limitations to on-demand listening:
Must be on a Windows PC attached to a high-speed internet line in the United States. So that cuts out listening to your music on any sort of musical "appliance" like a radio or cd player... You can't listen in your car, or anywhere else.
Its much like watching re-runs of Friends on pay-per-view. Who would want that?
But you have full access to the catalog for on-demand listening, plus all the niceties that comes with the service. I have been using Rhapsody for a while now and its just amazing by itself, with or without the ability to burn.
Looking at it in another way, you can sample the full song before commiting to buying it, not just short 30sec clips.
$16 plus $10 equals $36? No wonder I flunked math...
Nope, 10 bucks a month for access to the library, then 79 cents per song per cd you burn. 10 bucks to find an album, then full album price to brun it to a cd... *a* cd, not *as many cds as you want*.
I make these: http://beatseqr.com
1) Install Real's free player.
2) Set it up to not launch it's systray app.
3) Get Media Player Classic from www.doom9.org
4) Listen to/View Real content without using Real's crappy player.
5) ???
6) Profit!
If you're using Linux on x86 just go get mplayer and quityerbitchin.
This is the same industry that pushed through mandated SCMS (serial copy management) for all DAT music players. The result was that the consumer format failed even though it would have been an adequate replacement for cassette tape and avoided a lot of the trauma associated with burnable CD-Rs. They tried hard to kill that technology but failed as well. Minidiscs were a similar situation though Sony managed to kill that all by itself.
The recording industry's business plan has been floundering for years - expecting logic from them, beyond the logic that they need to make money, is silly.
Incidentally, those mix tapes were illegal, unfortunately, once they left your hands and entered someone else's. The difference was no one cared back then.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
But with Apple's service the breakdown is more like this:
Good CD = $9.95
CD with 2 good songs = $1.98
One-hit wonder = $0.99
vs. Sam Goody pricing:
Good CD = $16.99
CD with 2 good songs = $16.99
One-hit wonder = $16.99
Sounds like a much better plan to me.
To be fair, the Real model allows for more browsing than the Apple model. Your comparing apples to oranges here (oooh, I kill me...)
Apple cost 100*0.99=$99.00 (10 songs that you want to burn to CD - 90 that you downloaded but maybe didn't like...)
Real cost $10.00 + 0$ for 100 songs listened to + $7.90 for the ones you liked = $17.90
The models are quite different. One with the emphasis on getting songs you know the other on browsing for songs you might not know. Of course, the usefulness of being able to browse the library is highly dependant on the quality of each library.